f
whether in three weeks' time she would be so infatuated with this great
creature as not to know where divinity ended and mere earthly clay
began.

She had plenty of material to go upon: he was as naive in the
revelations of his own character as in his half-bewildered admiration
for the swift mercurial motions of her livelier temperament.

For a while, at the beginning of their acquaintance, some question as to
the degree of her sincerity seemed to trouble him.

"How much of what you say do you really mean?" he inquired.

"Oh, it varies!" she answered. "I talk so as to find out what I think.
Don't you? Some things one can't judge of till one hears them spoken."

"That seems funny to me."

"Why? You are fond of music: don't you find that sound is very
important? Can you _think_ music without ever hearing it?"

"Sometimes," he said.

"But only the airs."

"Oh, no; sometimes I can think like an orchestra, when I know all what
is in it."

"You must be very musical."

"Yes; that is my misfortune sometimes. The world has so much ugly sound
already; and then some people go out of their ways to make more."

"Ah, yes," she smiled, "I remember you were a musical critic once."

He let that go; and turning the conversation abruptly, as was his wont,
to more personal ends, said--

"Tell me, do you like my name?"

"Schnapps-Wasser?" Shaping the word elaborately, she made a wry face
over it.

"No--not that; my own name."

"But you have three."

"Yes; Hans, Fritz, Otto. Which of them you like best?"

"Fritz suits you best."

"Then will you always call me it?"

"Prince Fritz, Prince Fritz?--sounds like a robin," she said, trying it
in musical tones.

"No, just Fritz; no more, only that."

"Wait till I have known you a few more days; then we will see."

"But I shall already be nearly gone by then," he protested. "I am only
here such a short time."

"Perhaps some day you will come again."

"Ah! Again!" He sounded unutterable things, as though upon that word
hung his whole fate. Anything might happen to him before they met again.

"I have a secret," he said; "I want to tell it you."

"Are you sure you can trust me?"

"When I have told you it, you can tell anybody."

"Then it can't be much of a secret."

"Oh! You think?" He opened his big childish eyes at her and nodded his
head solemnly. "This secret has been with me thousands and thousands of
miles. Every time I shot off my gun, every day I went